Benjamin Mee

Benjamin Mee was born in australia. he had a turbulent relationship with the education system and was expelled from school. Benjamin started his working life as a bricklayer and decorator.

Then, after an encounter with a dolphin, he became fascinated with the field of animal intelligence and has never looked back. He decided to study Psychology at UCL before completing an MSc in Science Journalism at Imperial College. This lead on to a 15 year career in Journalism, both print and Broadcast. Ben was a contributing editor to Men's Health Magazine and was also a columnist for The Guardian for many years.

In addition, he has written, and continues to write, many articles for newspapers, such as The Independent, and also for magazines. He also had a regular slot on LBC Radio, as well as having undertaken interviews for a variety of programmes, radio segments, and news broadcasts.

In 2004 he moved with his family to Southern France in order to begin writing a book on the Evolution of Humour in Man and Animals. It was whilst in France that his wife Katherine was first diagnosed with a brain tumour, which she subsequently had removed and received treatment for. Not long after the Benjamin's father died, and his mother decided to sell her house and buy another property in which she and other family members could live together.

It was during the process of looking for properties that Benjamin's sister sent him a sales brochure for Dartmoor Zoo, with a note on it saying "Your dream scenario!". And that's when everything changed.

Benjamin and his family visited the large house, which just happened to have numerous wild and dangerous animals living in the grounds, and fell in love with it and the animals. They were particularly struck by the fact that, if a purchaser couldn't be found, the vast majority of the animals would have had to have been destroyed. It was a massive undertaking - the zoo had an extremely poor reputation, was in massive financial difficulty, and was incredibly dilapidated. The family forged forwards, they wanted to save the animals, and they bought the zoo in 2006.

Ben′s story is one that both moves and entertains - charting simultaneously the family′s attempts to improve the animals′ lives, the build-up to the Zoo′s official reopening in 2007, as well as Katherine′s decline, her final days, and how the family went on in the face of many obstacles...